Why Sri Lanka keeps Tamil areas insecure and unstable - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 December 2010, 15:58 GMT]Sri Lanka is actively using paramilitary groups in a campaign of terror in
Tamil areas, alongside the military’s own harassment of business and civil
society activity, to “actively deny the conditions – physical security and
societal stability - necessary for a fully fledged post-conflict revival,” the Tamil
Guardian newspaper argued in an online comment Thursday. Sri Lanka
is opposed to societal revival in the Tamil areas [because] with economic
progress and the restoration of normalcy will undoubtedly come renewed
Tamil demands for political rights, including greater freedom from Colombo's
rule and stronger links with the "globalised" economy and community, the Tamil Guardian argues.

Extracts of the Tamil Guardian’s comment follow:

“Eighteen months after Colombo declared victory and the end of the armed
conflict, Jaffna, Vanni, Trincomalee and Batticaloa remain places of militarized
terror and economic decline.”

“Despite the rhetoric, Sri Lanka has no interest in allowing Tamil
entrepreneurship and business to flourish. Instead, the state is seeking to
establish a hierarchical economy in which state-backed Sinhala interests
dominate the northeastern economy, with the population there serving as little
more than a desperate pool of labour for the former’s profits.”

“The only exceptions are the commercial interests of the Tamil paramilitaries
such as the EPDP and TMVP through which Colombo continues to keep
Tamil areas unstable and insecure.”

“Through the war - and the Norwegian-led peace process - international
actors tacitly accepted the government’s use of paramilitaries, as well as their
sordid sources of finance, as an integral part of its counter-insurgency against
the LTTE.”

“Today these murderous actors are being deployed by the Sri Lankan state,
alongside the military’s own harassment of Tamil business and civil society
activity to actively deny the conditions – physical security and societal stability
- necessary for a fully fledged post-conflict revival.”